'Stranger Things' Poster Started Its Life on an iPad Pro
In case you need another reason to consider the iPad Pro (and Apple Pencil) as a professional option for artists and designers, we're hearing that the iconic poster for “Stranger Things,” the critically-acclaimed Netflix original series, started its life on an iPad Pro in Procreate.
Mashable has the scoop, and in an interview with Lambert, the British artist behind that “Stranger Things” poster, the publication explains that an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil was indeed the first port of call when it came to designing the poster to fit Netflix's brief. The design of the poster, as per the classic cinema of the 1980s (read: “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” and more, for instance), required Lambert, “an artist that trained with oil paints,” to reproduce a traditional painting style for the poster. However, to help him in this, Lambert called on more modern digital tools: the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, a Wacom tablet, and Photoshop.
I chose to use the iPad Pro for the drawing stage of the poster because I find that I am able to sketch in a very natural way on the device using the Apple Pencil.
From here, Lambert “did some basic tonal blocking in Procreate,” before exporting the image to Photoshop where it was upscaled to a higher resolution and finished off. The need for a desktop-grade application, Lambert added, was due to the complex nature of the drawing itself: in the end, it featured hundreds of layers which needed tending to. However, Lambert wasn't finished with the iPad Pro.
Once the overall image was coming together, I exported a flat version of the poster back to the iPad, and used Procreate again to add layers of detail to areas that I felt needed to have a more fluid sketch style. I did several layer adjustments like this between the two devices and applications to give the poster a finished look.
It should come as no surprise Lambert was able to call on the iPad Pro in order to create such a fine piece of digital artwork. After all, this is the same artist who created a photorealistic image of Morgan Freeman using Procreate, an iPad Air, and his finger; before that, Lambert created a “Toy Story 3” drawing using the older Brushes app for iPad.
